


Memory by Moonlight

by SolarPoweredFlashlight



Category: League of Legends
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 12:38:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16832782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolarPoweredFlashlight/pseuds/SolarPoweredFlashlight
Summary: Even after Diana's betrayal of the Solari and slaughter of the Elders, Leona can't bring herself to kill the heretic. Plagued by memories of a happier past, she stands guard over Diana while she recovers from their latest clash, and struggles to reconcile the Diana she knew with the woman Diana has become.





	Memory by Moonlight

Leona wants to reach out and touch her, to run fingers through stark, pale hair, to stroke knuckles and hope that some solace can creep through to her unconscious mind. She doesn’t, of course. That would be inappropriate, and a serious overstep in boundaries.

But she will hold vigil. Diana is her responsibility. The state she’s in is Leona’s own fault, her own failure.

The healer comes in, checks on her, changes bandages. Leona does not offer help; the man will think she is cold, perhaps superior, but the reality is that she gave up the right to touch Diana with tenderness and concern long ago. Anything less than dire life-or-death situations that compel such an action would be a breach of trust.

She will endure the village healer’s disdain. She deserves worse.

He leaves again, and her eyes turn to the sleeping woman. She looks so much more like herself, out of that damnable armor. Smaller. Younger. A person from the past brought to life again.

_The Midsummer celebration lasts from dawn until dusk. The elders smile, the priests take off their ornate robes and dress like commoners, the acolytes laugh and forget their studies._

_It isn’t Leona’s first midsummer here since joining the ranks of the Solari, but tonight is special. Giddy glee curls in her stomach, the warmth of the sun and the cool touch of chilled blackberry cordial singing sweetly together in her soul._

_She is just barely nineteen, and she is in love._

_Relieved of the burden of her ceremonial armor, light and happy in the loose robes she’s been given, Leona sneaks a glance at the woman beside her._

_Diana is happy._

_Diana is happy, every line of her body and face showing contentedness, ease._

_Leona looks at her and is overcome with the desire to kiss her again and again._

_Later. They will have their opportunity._

_There’s dancing and there’s drinking, but Leona takes only a few sips and watches Diana do the same. The golden girl of Targon whirls happily from the arms of one dance partner to the next, suddenly popular now that the boundaries of class have melted away with the disappearance of her status-symbol equipment and the addition of a little alcohol._

_She whispers apologies to Diana, who sits at the side in the brittle mountain grass, watching. Diana touches her elbow and the whole arm seems to burst to life with sensation, excitement, anticipation. They share a secret smile._

_Diana can be jealous, sometimes, but tonight she seems comfortable. Unthreatened._

_Tonight everything is as it should be._

Will she ever be that person again? Leona readjusts in the uncomfortable chair, giving in to temptation and letting her eyes scrutinize the brand. The moon claimed Diana with much more violence than the sun claimed Leona.

How different would things be now, if she hadn’t been so eager to answer the League’s summons? Would Diana be trapped in this cycle of anger and blame and vindication if only Leona had been there, like she’d promised she would be?

Yes, without her armor on, she looks more like that young woman she remembers, the woman before the brand. But Leona struggles to reconcile the two people. She can’t imagine this sad shell of her dearest friend and first love ever smiling, ever reaching with utter softness and a look of awe to twine fingers in auburn hair.

No, that’s a lie.

She can imagine it.

She’s imagining it now, wishing with all her heart that something could bring them back together. That she could heal whatever went wrong in Diana’s heart, Diana’s mind – that she could climb into the tiny cot with her and whisper that everything would be alright, and know that when they woke Diana would come to consciousness - to Leona - gently and without reluctance. That when she woke, she would forgive her.

Leona imagines it a thousand ways. She finds hundreds of possible paths along which Diana might wander and finally, at last, find it in her heart to take Leona’s hand and make peace between them.

Her eyes regard the hungry angles of Diana’s jaw, the bruises and scars.

Wishful thinking. Nothing more.

_The festivities last late into the night, even though the elders go to bed and the food is cleared away. Officially, the day is over, but unofficially even the worshippers of the sun will dance in the light of the moon when the weather is good and the wine is strong._

_Leona slips away from the nameless acolyte she’s dancing with and makes her apologies. She’s the Chosen, of course, she jokes, she has to be up with the rising of the sun even if everybody else has the morning off tomorrow._

_That isn’t true. Tomorrow is a rare half-day, and nobody will question where people are or how late they were up unless they fail to appear at their duties by noon._

_Her blood thrums with the possibilities as she finds her way to Diana._

_As always, she’s at her most stunning in the evening. A surge of passion and fondness takes Leona, and after a quick glance around to be sure nobody is watching, she presses a quick kiss to Diana’s forehead._

_Diana laughs quietly, touches the backs of their hands together._

_They don’t dare love openly, knowing the fuss it would cause._

_But they do dare to love._

_“You’re feeling bold tonight,” Diana murmurs, smiling in spite of herself._

_“Just you wait until I get you alone,” Leona answers, feeling her whole self, body and soul, answer the sound of Diana’s voice with a sudden heat._

_They’ve stolen kisses so many times, tucked up onto Diana’s rooftop sanctuaries or ducked quickly into hidden alcoves. Fingertips have found seams where skin could be found, sampled urgently in clandestine gulps._

_There’s never been time, before, never been freedom._

_Tonight will be the first opportunity they’ve ever had to –_

_Diana blushes at Leona’s tone, and Leona blushes right back._

She has to wonder, of course, what she did wrong. Why Diana didn’t trust her enough to just wait, to hold on to her information before she went to the elders.

Although, Leona supposes, there’s only so much you can pretend you haven’t changed when you’ve got the mark of a heretic indelibly written on your face.

Realistically, what else could Diana have done? Once the Lunari had been discovered, she would never have been able to hold that knowledge in – certainly not long enough for Leona to petition to get leave from the league training, not long enough for her to travel back to Mount Targon from the institute.

Even if she’d written to Leona with the information, the elders likely would have read her correspondence before sending it, if they’d sent it at all, and the confrontation still would have happened.

Leona left her with no other options. It’s her fault for leaving.

If only she’d waited just a few more months.

And now Leona is the last of her order, and Diana is the first of hers, and by all rights they ought to be working together.

Imagine a world where sun and moon were lovers, and not enemies.

Again, the longing to reach out stirs strongly within her. The face is so familiar, though the features are aged by time and trials. Leona tries not to think how well her hands know this woman, how much she longs for the simplicity of touch.

But touch requires trust. And Diana doesn’t trust her anymore, if she ever did.

_Alone in Leona’s room, fear very briefly overshadows hunger. Her courage back in the courtyard feels empty, drained dry with every step closer to privacy. The door is shut, and now they’re –_

_Diana reaches out, closes the distance between them, holds her face and kisses her. Her thoughts effectively interrupted, Leona allows her tension to release its grip. She kisses back, soft and meaningful. Tonight seems to swell with meaning, with import. The most important thing, the absolute most important thing, is that Diana never doubts how much Leona loves her. No matter what does or doesn’t happen._

_They pull apart, and Diana’s eyes gleam passion in the moonlight._

_Still –_

_“You’re sure?” Leona whispers._

_“Completely,” Diana whispers back. Diana is always so confident in her convictions. It reassures Leona, gives her something sturdy to hold on to even as she’s fluttering nervously with the sheer responsibility of being entrusted with another person’s body._

_Diana kisses her again, and her hand finds Leona’s sleeve, slides up to thumb her forearm._

_She pulls away again and leaves Leona feeling fire in her skin._

_“Are you sure?” Diana counters._

_“Yes,” Leona breathes, and a fresh wellspring of desire finds her fists balling in Diana’s loose collar, seizing her for an onslaught of kissing._

_They find the bed, and Leona feels another spike of adrenaline leap between her shoulder blades at the innocuous bump of her legs against its edge._

_First the clothes._

_The moment she’s been dreaming of since they were seventeen and fumbled through their first kiss, alternating between shy and certain._

_It feels so much like that, the fluctuating nerves and eagerness, the fear of getting things wrong, the desperation to move forward and see her imagination outdone once more by the unmatchable glory of real flesh, real words, real love._

_She takes hold of Diana’s cord; the knot will be so easily undone, but._

_“Is it okay if I - ?” she whispers, just to be sure._

_She loves her so, so much. She doesn’t want to make a mess of this._

_“Yeah,” Diana says, a breath away, smiling against Leona’s lips._

_Leona takes the simple belt more firmly in her fingers and frees it with a hammering heart._

The healer is back. Did Leona fall asleep? Daylight filters through the small, high windows. Somewhere she can hear cranky-sounding chickens. Her eyes flick to the pile of Lunari relics - good, they’re still there.

She curses her own weakness. Sitting guard was as much to protect Diana’s armor as it was to protect the woman herself.

With the sun out, the healer scrutinizes Leona in a way he didn’t last night.

“You’re injured,” he says, accusingly.

“Yes,” she concedes, “but nothing worthy of wasting your supplies.”

As she says it she realizes what a tell it is. She would not use this poor village’s bandages and salve on her own wounds, but did not hesitate to ask of it for Diana.

Of course, Diana’s in much worse shape than she is.

The man checks her breathing, her eyes, sniffs the wounds, washes them, changes her bandages.

Again, Leona does not offer to help.

_“I love you,” Diana exhales, both hands in Leona’s hair, mouth on her ear, bare legs twined together. Leona responds by surging up, pressing their bodies together, wishing to be as near to her as physically possible._

_Her palms slide down smooth sides, and she’s doing everything she can to imprint this into her memory forever. She doesn’t know when they’ll next have this sort of privacy, and now that she knows how good it feels to be with Diana like this, exposed and skin to skin, she thinks she may never dream of anything else ever again._

_“You’re so beautiful,” Diana whispers, kissing the words down Leona’s neck, filling her with fire. She rebalances on her arms and kisses along shoulders, arms. She lingers there, to Leona’s delight and confusion, dotting her upper arm with warm points of unashamed affection._

_“What are you doing?” Leona asks, laughing through the words - it tickles a little, these fluttering kisses._

_“You have freckles,” Diana replies, flicking her eyes up to stare at Leona with something - something incredible, something wonderful - something that makes Leona feel worthy of this love._

_“I do,” Leona says, because that’s about all she can say through the frenzy of good feelings Diana has stirred up in her so effectively. She gazes down at this woman - unique, one of a kind, brilliant, so brilliant - and marvels that she can be impressed by freckles._

_Smitten suddenly anew by moonlight in her lover’s eyes, Leona reaches out and strokes her face. Diana smiles, briefly undressed beyond the mere nakedness they’re sharing tonight for the first time._

_Time stills, it seems to Leona._

_“I love you,” Leona says, not for the first time that night, not for the last._

_“I love you too,” Diana says._

_The moment hangs, a puff of delicate floating seed pods in a warm, slow summer air._

_Then something sly enters Diana’s expression._

_“Where else do you have freckles?” She purrs, and Leona’s heart catches in her chest and the inferno roars with the fresh toss of kindling._

_Diana doesn’t give her the opportunity to answer, only brings her mouth back to Leona’s torso and begins to navigate lower._

Beside her, Diana stirs.

Leona sits upright, gathering her wits. She doesn’t know what kind of condition she’ll be in, mentally. It’s entirely possible there’s no point in staying beyond when Diana wakes. In fact, she resolves in that moment that she ought to just leave as soon as she knows Diana can collect her valuable Lunari artifacts and walk away to recover in one of her own safe places.

She just assumes Diana has safe places left - she’s always been good at finding the dusty, overlooked niches that could house a lone wanderer, a quiet outcast.

But she’s not quiet anymore, is she?

Leona stifles a nostalgic little smile as she corrects herself. Diana was never quiet. That was her problem.

It’s a false alarm - she groans a few meaningless words, rolls over, goes back to sleep. Her face is pained; primitive poultices can only do so much. But this was an unsanctioned fight outside of the League; Diana could get in trouble, as could Leona, if they tried to get better medical help.

Damn her pride, Leona thinks, and then immediately feels ashamed. This isn’t Diana’s fault. She was taken advantage of by an ancient power, emotionally abused her entire life by an order of supposedly enlightened religious figures. Left alone by the one person who claimed to love her, who promised to protect her.

How can Leona ever say with any sort of conviction that she’s the protector of the weak, the guardian of the just, when she couldn’t even keep the person she loved most in the world safe from herself?

_Below her, Diana is a goddess._

_Celestials leave Leona’s mind, her heart full of hedonistic worship of the physical, the mortal, the now._

_Diana shudders and it is divine._

_Eternity and the ideal of beauty is there, there in the shadow of her stomach, the arch of her back._

_“Don’t stop,” begs the avatar of beauty, eternity, divinity, and Leona can do nothing but obey._

_She positions her own ugly, training-roughed hands on the hips of her lover. Leona lowers her head once more between pale thighs scattered with the dark blemishes of bites that started as kisses._

_Then she presses the flat of her tongue firmly against the wetness of her lover, drives forward, seeking and shortly finding the spot, the rhythm._

_Below her, a goddess trembles, moans._

The noon light shines into the small room.

Leona’s master reaches for her, calling between the slats of wood, warming her uncomfortably, guiltily.

Not yet, she thinks, not yet.

Diana still sleeps, but the sun invades, splashes against her face, her eyes.

Unwelcome.

But she’s in pain, doesn’t seem to want to move.

With a frown, Leona rises, adjusts the curtain slightly.

And she remembers the noon sun on that face in a different time, a different place.

_“I wish we could stay like this forever,” Leona confesses, arms wrapped around Diana. She doesn’t want to believe the sun is up already, doesn’t want to believe the night they shared will soon just be a memory._

_“Every night,” Diana says, burrowing into Leona’s embrace, face against her collarbone. “I wish we could do that every night.”_

_Leona runs fingers through her hair, gold in the morning’s glow. She kisses the crown of her head, heedless of where her face has been, where her hands have been. Both of them will absolutely require a shower no matter what. No point in holding back from the natural impulse to affection._

_“Maybe one day,” Leona murmurs._

_“The Elders would never allow it,” Diana says, but without venom - still basking, still too content._

_“We’ll be Elders one day,” Leona answers. “Then we can make our own rules.”_

_Diana hums a gentle, adoring laugh directly into her chest._

_“Did you just promise to love me until you’re old and wrinkly?”_

_Leona laughs and doesn’t answer - she’s made enough life-long binding promises at this point that she doesn’t feel the need to quantify her personal life with one._

_They fall silent, and Leona strokes her hair and thinks about how she can feel her heartbeat, how nice everything is, how good life can be._

_They leave it until the very last minute, dozing in the warmth of each other and the warmth of the sun. Leona feels strongly that she has the blessing of the Solari, that she has not erred in her decision._

_The goodness of the sun’s rays feel like quiet approval._

And now, at last, Diana awakes. She scowls.

She sees Leona. She scowls more.

“What have you done,” Diana coughs.

“I brought you to a village, and watched over your armor while you slept,” Leona says, and knows she sounds as tired as she feels. “You’re conscious now - I leave the task of protecting your belongings to you.”

She stands. She waits for some barb, some accusation, but Diana has none. Perhaps she used them all in their last fight.

Leona tries to think of something to say that won’t just come out sounding condescending or smug. She won the fight but she doesn’t feel like it. And she still hasn’t shaken the nagging feeling that Diana might have actually gone through with it and killed her as she’s always frantically threatening to do.

Like an abused dog, Leona thinks.

She inhales.

“I will not kill you, Diana,” she says. It’s the third or fourth time she’s said this, at this point.

“Leave,” Diana says.

Leona nods and steps past the threshold, out into the light.

 _I will not kill you,_ she says to herself again.

And what she means is _I will not give up on you._


End file.
